The Mahabharata, which is probably of later date, contains about two hundred and twenty thousand lines, and is divided into eighteen books, each of which would make a large volume.  It is supposed to have been collected by Vyasa, who also collected the Vedas and Puranas.  These legends are very old, and seem to refer to the early history of India.  There appear to have been two Aryan dynasties in ancient India,—­the Solar and Lunar.  Rama belonged to the first and Bharata to the second.  Pandu, a descendant of the last, has five brave sons, who are the heroes of this book.  One of them, Arjuna, is especially distinguished.  One of the episodes is the famous Bhagavat-gita.  Another is called the Brahman’s Lament.  Another describes the deluge, showing the tradition of a flood existing in India many centuries before Christ.  Another gives the story of Savitri and Satyavan.  These episodes occupy three fourths of the poem, and from them are derived most of the legends of the Puranas.  A supplement, which is itself a longer poem than the Iliad and Odyssey combined (which together contain about thirty thousand lines), is the source of the modern worship of Krishna.  The whole poem represents the multilateral character of Hinduism.  It indicates a higher degree of civilization than that of the Homeric poems, and describes a vast variety of fruits and flowers existing under culture.  The characters are nobler and purer than those of Homer.  The pictures of domestic and social life are very touching; children are dutiful to their parents, parents careful of their children; wives are loyal and obedient, yet independent in their opinions; and peace reigns in the domestic circle.

The different works known as the Puranas are derived from the same religious system as the two epics.  They repeat the cosmogony of the poems, and they relate more fully their mythological legends.  Siva and Vischnu are almost the sole objects of worship in the Puranas.  There is a sectarian element in their devotion to these deities which shows their partiality, and prevents them from being authorities for Hindoo belief as a whole.[86]

The Puranas, in their original form, belong to a period, says Mr. Wilson, a century before the Christian era.  They grew out of the conflict between Buddhism and Brahmanism.  The latter system had offered no personal gods to the people and given them no outward worship, and the masses had been uninterested in the abstract view of Deity held by the Brahmans.[87]

According to Mr. Wilson,[88] there are eighteen Puranas which are now read by the common people.  They are read a great deal by women.  Some are very ancient, or at least contain fragments of more ancient Puranas.  The very word signifies “antiquity.”  Most of them are devoted to the worship of Vischnu.  According to the Bhagavat Purana,[89] the only reasonable object of life is to meditate on Vischnu.  Brahma, who is called in one place “the cause of causes,” proclaims Vischnu to be the only pure absolute essence, of which the universe is the manifestation.  In the Vischnu Purana, Brahma, at the head of the gods, adores Vischnu as the Supreme Being whom he himself cannot understand.